Moonglow
Diamond Member
they got the houses cause someone lent them the monies. The government did not stand behind them with a gun forcing them to do it.
The Government Pushed The Subprime Loans.
1999 New York Times Article on what Bill Clinton was having Fannie & Freddie do to cause a subprime lending crisis.
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders...Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people...
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's...
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings...
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
read Reckless Endangerment by gretchen morgenson,( NY Times bus. editor) Fannie Mae chief executive James Johnson in 1991 had the plug pulled on any and all oversight agencies and congressional oversight that would have reigned in F&F...it was baked into the cake, he neutered any and all dissent. the fact that James Johnson was not even called to testify before the comm . investigating F&F's/Housing Blow up tells you stright away what a crock the whole investigation was.
yet again, no one forced the monies to be loaned, and nobody forced the money lenders to take out bets on thier failure.